Non-invasive blood pressure monitors are widely used in hospitals and other clinical facilities to measure the blood pressure of patients. In this procedure an inflatable cuff is wrapped about the patients arm or leg and is inflated to a predetermined pressure over an artery. When employing a single lumen cuff, the systolic and diastolic measurements are taken as the cuff is being deflated. A more recent procedure has been developed wherein the pressure measurements are taken during the period when the cuff is being inflated. This later procedure allows for a more rapid determination of the patients blood pressure which in certain cases, can be extremely important. A dual lumen cuff is required to carry out this more rapid procedure.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,226,419 B2 to Lane et al. there is disclosed a blood pressure monitor that has the capability of taking blood pressure measurements involving the more rapid procedure requiring the use of a dual lumen cuff or, alternatively, the slower, more conventional, procedure using a single lumen cuff. As explained in greater detail in the Lane et al. patent the monitor contains a pair of pneumatic flow circuits and a pair of lumen connector terminals. The terminals are mounted upon an outer wall of the monitor cabinet and are arranged to interchangeably accept one of two available flow adaptors. The first adaptor is configured to accept the one lumen of a single lumen cuff and place the lumen in fluid flow communication with both flow circuits. The second adaptor is configured to individually accept each of the two lumens of a dual lumen cuff and place each lumen in fluid flow communication with a separate one of the two flow circuits. The adaptors, however, must be changed manually to accommodate an appropriate connection. The manual changing of adaptors can be a time consuming process particularly during a medical emergency where loss of time may be critical. In addition, the adaptors can easily become lost or be inadvertently carried off to an unknown location again extending the amount of time needed to change the monitor over from one of the two available measurement configuration to another.